The invention relates to the field of art easels, and specifically to field easels having integrated storage capacity.
Easels have been used by artists for thousands of years to hold a canvas or other painting support while the artist worked. Traditionally, easels were constructed of wood using a tripod or H-frame configuration. The basic components of an easel include a base and horizontal members attached to the base for securing a painting support. Easels come in various sizes, ranging from fixed studio easels to tabletop easels to small field easels. Studio easels typically use a large, floor-standing base, while field easels often use integrated collapsible tripods.
A paint or sketch box usually refers to a covered storage box used to separate and store art supplies, and many sketch boxes can be used while an artist is painting to provide access to art supplies. While the sketch box can be a separate unit, some field easels utilize integrated sketch boxes. These types of integrated field easels are often unwieldy, requiring large amounts of setup time. It is thus an object of the present invention to provide an integrated field easel that minimizes the amount of setup time required.
Of those integrated field easels in the prior art, none attempted to organize and secure art supplies during travel. Because art supplies can shift during travel, the integrated field easels of the prior art required the artist to reorganize art supplies upon arriving at the desired location. Thus, it is also an object of the present invention to provide a sketch box capable of securing painting supplies during travel in an organized manner.
Another deficiency of integrated field easels of the prior art is that such easels often have tripods that are incapable of other uses. Today, tripods are used for a variety of purposes, including photography, and most modern tripods use standardized mounts such that many different types of equipment may be mounted on the universal mount tripod. Artists often photograph the subject matter of a work of art as well as painting in plain air in order to touch up the painting in a studio or to create similarly themed works of art using different painting supports. Easels of the prior art made this process difficult, as an artist wishing to both photograph and paint on a field easel was required to carry a separate tripod for an easel and a camera.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,093,326 (the “'326 patent”), utilizes a standardized tripod mount; however, the '326 patent's implementation of such standardized tripod mount defeats several purposes of a sketch box because the tripod is mounted by drilling a hole in the bottom of the sketch box and mounting the sketch box to the tripod using a wing nut. This method of mounting a sketch box to a tripod defeats many benefits of the sketch box because paint and other items can fall through or leak out the mounting hole during travel. Also, the single mount utilized by the '326 patent relies upon the sketch box structural material for strength rather than spreading the force exerted by the mount over a significant area, such as utilizing a metal base plate. Therefore, it is a further object of the present invention to provide a field easel that can utilize a standardized tripod as the base of the easel without compromising the structural integrity or the utility of the integrated sketch box.
Most integrated field easels of the prior art also lack a means to adjust the easel so that the painting support is at a comfortable painting height. That is, easels of the prior art allow adjustment of the tripod or other base to adjust the height of the painting support to a level comfortable for the artist, only. While two easels in public use do provide for vertical adjustment of a painting support with respect to the sketch box, the designs of U.S. Pat. No. 2,751,271 (the “'271 patent”) and 6,308,925 (the “'925 patent”) lack the requisite structural strength needed to prevent extraneous movement of the painting support while the artist works. In the '271 and '925 patents, the structure for the painting support holders is one-dimensional; that is, both painting support holders are attached to the same linear structural member. It is thus an object of the present invention to allow a user to adjust the height of a painting support without adjusting the tripod or other base, while at the same time providing greater than one-dimensional structural strength to the painting support holder.
A further deficiency of integrated field easels of the prior art is that such easels sacrifice usability and workspace for portability. It is thus another object of the present invention to provide an easel that is capable of being collapsed into a small size suitable for travel, including traveling with a wet or partially complete painting, while at the same time providing a sketch box having ample storage capacity for painting supplies and having ample workspace for painting.
Depending on the painting conditions, an artist may also need secure a painting support in either a vertical or a horizontal position. Thus, it is a further object of the present invention to provide an integrated field easel which is capable of being adjusted between a vertical and horizontal plane and to allow the user to incrementally set the angle at which the painting support is positioned.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an easel with integrated sketch box that is capable of securing art supplies in a usable, visible position when the easel is in use.